Film Adaptations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Books (Video)

The visually lush, character-driven narratives of Gabriel García Márquez would seem to cry out for movie treatments. And, indeed, there have been several film adaptations of stories by the prodigious Colombian Nobel laureate, who died of cancer at 87 on Thursday at his Mexico City home.

The author, who mid-wifed the literary genre of “magical realism,” in which the fantastic and dreamlike are seamlessly interwoven with gritty, mundane reality, had a lifelong fascination with cinema. Occasionally he mused about wanting to be a film director, and he applied his wizardly pen to a screenplay or two between churning out novels, short stories, reportage and even movie reviews. Not surprisingly, one of García Márquez’s sons, Rodrigo García, has gone on to become a respected television and film director.

Yet, so far, no big-screen re-imagining of a García Márquez work has managed to fully evoke the sublime qualities of his writing. Here’s a look at the films, and what did (and didn’t) work.

“Eréndira” (1983)

This hallucinatory drama about a teenage girl living with her grandmother in a decaying windswept desert house had an original screenplay by García Márquez, based on characters who earned cameo roles in his reputation-making 1967 novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Reviewers praised the comic performance of Greek actress Irene Papas, cast against type (and ethnicity) as the grandmother, as well as the Brazilian ingénue Claudia Ohana as the beleaguered title character who gets pushed by her grandmother into prostitution. But the film’s relentless layering of macabre, erotically charged atmospherics left some viewers slightly woozy. One critic compared it, not favorably, to the cinematic oeuvre of Surrealist master Luis Buñuel, offering a backhanded compliment to the movie’s “dreamy if monotonous charm.”

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” (1987)

Set in a Colombian small town similar to many that García Márquez knew from his youth, the Spanish-language movie boasted a solid pedigree. It was adapted by Tonino Guerrao, the Italian screenwriter behind “Amarcord,” Federico Fellini’s classic comic bildungsroman about small-town memory and desire, and directed by Francesco Rosi. The improbable international cast included Ornella Muti and Rupert Everett. But the storyline – a seemingly straightforward, yet deviously plotted reconstruction of how an entire village is implicated, directly or indirectly, in a murder – ended up getting swamped in superfluous visuals and melodramatic storytelling.

“No One Writes to the Colonel” (1999)

Directed by Arturo Ripstein, the urbane fabulist and Luis Buñuel protégée who almost single-handedly saved Mexican indie film production in the latter half of the 20th century, this is arguably the most successful movie version of a García Márquez work. Borrowing copiously from the author’s childhood memories, it’s the tale of the twilight years of a genteel military officer who served in Colombia’s disastrous Thousand Days’ War. “A deeply moving adaptation,” said Variety critic Leonardo Garcia Tsao.

“Love In the Time of Cholera” (2007)

Passion postponed – and postponed, and postponed — is the theme of this swooning, bittersweet meditation on the vagaries and varieties of love. Mike Newell directed from a Ronald Harwood screenplay. Javier Bardem starred as the dashing, perpetually heartsick hero, who patiently waits decades to consummate his love for an elusive beauty. But the critics weren’t seduced. A Los Angeles Times reviewer savaged the movie as a “plodding, tone-deaf, overripe, overheated Oscar-baiting telenovela.” This Speakeasy blogger has a warmer opinion of the film, possibly because he was able to pay a set-visit during shooting in the ravishing baroque coastal city of Cartagena, Colombia.

“Of Love and Other Demons” (2009)

A 53 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the end of the world. But it’s not a badge of distinction, either. On the page, this tightly crafted fable of sexual victimization and spiritual persecution, set in the Spanish colonies during the Inquisition-slavery era, packed real emotional and intellectual punch. On the screen, it played a bit like an art-house version of “The Exorcist,” and viewers’ heads turned away.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.